


Somewhere I'm Going

by exbex



Series: Let Me Go Home [3]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 03:24:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8473579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exbex/pseuds/exbex
Summary: I just really wanted Johnson to have a great appreciation for John Scalzi's Redshirts. So I ended up with a sequel. And I think I saw on tumblr that it's No Shame November. But who am I kidding? Look at what I write; every freaking day is No Shame here.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I just really wanted Johnson to have a great appreciation for John Scalzi's _Redshirts_. So I ended up with a sequel. And I think I saw on tumblr that it's No Shame November. But who am I kidding? Look at what I write; every freaking day is No Shame here.

“Honey, why is John Johnson sending you a package?”

Kent pulls his arm away from his eyes and shifts, then sits up slowly, groaning slightly at the way his hips protest. “I dunno. Who’s John Johnson?”

“Samwell Men’s Hockey goalie my freshman year,” Bitty walks into the living room with a large envelope in hand. “Nice. Strange, but nice. I haven’t heard from him in years.”

Kent peers at the package. “Why is your ex-teammate sending me a package?”

“I don’t know, Honey.” Bitty’s mouth seems to be twitching in amusement. “I don’t even know how he got an address, but that’s John Johnson for you.” 

Kent reaches for the envelope and Bitty hands it over. Kent gets it ripped open and a paperback book tumbles out to the floor. Bitty and   
Kent both peer down at the bookcover.

 _“Redshirts_? I’ve never heard of it.”

“Me neither,” Kent murmurs as he reaches down to retrieve it. He flips it over and frowns as he reads the back cover. “This just sounds weird. And why would he send me a book?”

“Because it’s Johnson,” Bitty shrugs.

**

Kent doesn’t even remember packing the book in his carry-on, but he finds himself opening it the next time he’s on a roadie. A bookmark falls out, on which there’s a note that makes absolutely no sense.

_Go for it. Nothing to worry about. This is one of those AUs in which the OTP is you/happiness.  
-John Johnson_

The weirdness of it all is just enough, for some reason, to get Kent to start reading. The book is funny, but weird, and it makes Kent confused enough to consider giving up on it, but gradually, over the next few weeks, he gets into it. 

It’s not until he’s nearly reached the last page that he realizes that Johnson’s real message lies within the book’s theme of being proactive in your own story, about not getting trapped in a narrative that you think you have no control over. Kent knows exactly what the hell that’s all about. And Kent doesn’t know if he should be worried about the eeriness of the whole situation, but he thinks about a future without Eric Bittle and comes up blank, and finally, the decision that he’s been mulling over for the last three months suddenly seems crystal clear.

**

This year they spend July Fourth in Syracuse. Kent had agonized over where he should do this, finally deciding on the rink where he first played hockey. He worries that it’s not romantic enough, he worries because the place means something to Kent but not really anything to Eric, he worries that everything will go pear-shaped very quickly, but he takes it as a good sign that, when he wakes Eric up at 7:32 AM and says “How about humoring your boyfriend on his birthday?” Eric just blinks sleepily for a moment, but then smiles and murmurs, “of course Honey.”

Bitty is unusually quiet as they lace up their skates and step out onto the ice, and Kent hopes that it’s due to the early hour, chides himself slightly for not stopping for coffee. But Bitty seems to perk up after a few slow warm-up laps, and Kent watches as he pushes off and skates to center ice, doing a couple of figure eights before skating back over to Kent.

“Is this where you learned to skate?” 

“Yeah,” Kent reaches for Eric’s hand, breathes a little easier when Eric laces his fingers with Kent’s own. “I uh, I wanted to show it to you, I guess.” 

“Thank you,” Eric says quietly, and when Kent looks at him, Bitty is gazing at him as if he’s better than those double-yoke eggs that Bitty is always so pleased about when he happens to crack one open during a baking session.

“Huh?” and Kent wonders if he has any hope of being articulate enough to do what he came here to do.

“For showing me this part of yourself. Of your past,” and he leans in to kiss Kent, softly but reassuringly.

Kent, suddenly aware of exactly what he wants to say, turns so that he’s taking hold of both of Eric’s hands. “It’s because I know I can trust you with it,” he says, grey eyes looking into brown. “Which is why I’m asking you to marry me.”

Eric has his hands clapped over his mouth suddenly, and it’s one of the few moments in their relationship that Kent is hoping that he’s going to start crying, because crying will probably mean that a ‘yes’ is forthcoming, crying will mean that he’s overcome with emotion, that he’s happy and excited and _Kent’s_.

But when he pulls his hands away, he’s laughing. And it’s a different sort of laughter than Kent has ever heard from him, and he has one awful, bewildering moment in which he doesn’t know what it means.

“Oh Honey. I just…I never imagined this-I don’t even know how I got here.” He pauses, and then he’s not laughing anymore. “If you had told me a few years ago, that this would be us, I’d have told you you were crazy.”

“Um, does that mean…?”

“Yes, Kent Victor Parson. It means yes.”

**

Years ago, Kent bought his mother her dream home, and now Kent has to admire her choice in a house with a wraparound porch. He and Eric can watch the fireworks curled up together on the cushioned porch swing, and as the evening winds down they have nowhere they need to be, and there’s a sense that time has slowed down.

When Eric sighs a little and somehow manages to curl in even closer, Kent slides one hand down to Eric’s hip, ostensibly as a gesture of affection, but mostly just to marvel at his good fortune.

“And here I just got you a watch,” Eric huffs, in that way of his in which he’s trying to chirp but he can’t keep himself from morphing into an actual ray of sunlight. “You know you’re supposed to be getting gifts on your birthday, not giving them out,” he teases, giving Kent’s thigh a squeeze. “I don’t think I’ve been so pleasantly surprised since Coach showed up at parent’s weekend my senior year wearing my Samwell jersey.”

“One, the watch is great. Two, you said ‘yes,’ which counts for something like, a million years’ worth of presents,” Kent murmurs before placing a kiss to Eric’s cheek.

“Should make the next fifty birthdays or so easy,” Bitty replies before burying his fingers in Kent’s hair and kissing him as if it’s the beginning of their very own happy ending.

Maybe, just maybe, it is.


End file.
